This is what I’m really aiming at in my life. Recording the moments like this one below, remembered for me by Facebook. They occur and then disappear. It’s a matter of acceptance to understand that they don’t keep happening. You see something, then pause, see lots of other things without necessarily noticing them then see something else worthy of note.

Where I’m struggling is in maintaining. I bumped into someone yesterday who said she keeps reading my posts. Or at least reading the long ones until she gives up. It was a lovely thing to say. It also reminds me that sometimes people don’t press the like button but do like what they’ve managed to read. Or maybe it just makes them think. I am still struggling to find a pattern to adhere to. Struggling? Maybe meandering around the possibility of.

There’s a peculiar problem that comes from my gregarious nature. In fact I’m happiest when I’m being ignored but with the understanding that conversation, and therefore recognition, is ever present. This is my ideal space for moving steadily forward at a sensible pace. (A little one line poem that was). I’ve found it really helpful to have given myself a goal that requires me to be somewhere doing something. Mostly at home reading and writing. Yesterday I went to join a group of friends sitting in a cafe on St George’s Square. I came at the cafe obliquely. There was a distance of maybe fifty feet to cover before I reached them. It took me twenty minutes. I asked one person a question about what they were doing. This generated a bit of conversation then I left and continued on my way and bumped into, I think, three people in a continuous line and they each chatted about things. I learned about the house of Lords, Facebook reading habits and how the alcoholics in the town square make themselves feel better. This rate of activity, taking twenty minutes to cross a space that shouldn’t even take a minute to cross, is very diminishing. It makes me doubt my resolution. There is some truth in this but my sense of resolution is constantly attacked by my sense of self. At the heart of my self is a feeling that learning about the world has a supreme overriding validity. Thus my sense of resolution, to do what it is I have stated an intention to do, is at the cost of a feeling of discovery. Ideally there is the possibility of discovery of a new sense of self at the heart of the resolve but that feels like a leap of faith.

* This brings me to Indiana Jones and Kierkegaard. In later years I’ve read Kierkegaard. He is a remarkable writer who talks about the decision by Abraham to kill his son Isaac. He says it looks like madness but it is literally a leap into faith as he calls it. That which looks irrational has reason at the heart of it. Sometimes. It’s the sometimes that we can’t determine. That is where faith comes in. I learned this in the ABC cinema at the age of fifteen watching this clip.

It is an injunction against doubt. Indy has to be willing to die to save his father. That’s after tomb raiding, a tank versus horse chase and fighting and kissing. It makes my heart sing in the same way as Kierkegaard does but with more immediacy. It is towards this we point ourselves when we trust our resolve to act over our need to find reassurance in searching through the world. At the heart of the perfect action, the need to seek out understanding is wrapped tightly up. The incomprehensible sense of why we act is sometimes hidden from us yet we are called forward by something. In the case of Indiana Jones it is literally George Lucas calling Menno Meyes calling Stephen Spielberg calling Harrison Ford to call up Indiana Jones. That’s not what we see. What we see is a pile of polystyrene and scenery paint and the work of the costume department and lighting and camera and editing (and camera? Douglas bleeding Slocombe!!!). All of these aid us in believing. At the age of fifteen, driven by a deep sense of faith in the power of entertainment to make us believe I sought out this film and loved it with qualifications. Then I put it away, then it came back and kept coming back. I really want to put it away again. Put it back inside to drive me and not have to keep reaching for it to explain me.

Who knows if I can stick to the schedule. I’ve broken every single law I’ve created for myself in relation to my patterning. So what I write intensely long-winded posts about stuff that relates only to what’s in my head. It’s driven by a sense of love. I hope loads of people read this. I believe whole-heartedly in what I’ve written here. It comes with a clip to break up the boredom. However, mostly I hope that I can forgive myself for breaking my own laws. Abraham didn’t want to kill his son and hoped right up until the last moment that he would be saved. A book tells me this, strictly a book about a book told me this. It only becomes true when I forget the book and find the truth replicated within me. Help me believe. Give me faith.